back in the saddle

First post in more than two years, I hope you're happy Mindy! We'll see how long I can keep this up. Let alone keeping up the punctuation and capitalization. I guess I decided to update this because I created a blog for my family. My nephew, Alex, lives in Jefferson City, Mo., with my brother and his wife. Alex is 2, and they are expecting their second child. My parents still live in Effingham, Ill., where I grew up. They talk to Alex as often as they can via Webcam, so I figured this family blog would be a great way to create sort of an online scrapbook. Hopefully my brother's family and my parents will get into it and post new things on their own. So far it's pretty much just me! But hopefully it'll be a way for us all to feel closer than we get to be most of the time. This video should explain pretty much why we want him around all the time :)

Frenchie things

In the fall of 2005, I went to Montpellier, France to study for the semester. I attended Paul Valery University. It was a great experience that I recommend to anyone. Montpellier's Web site is available in many languages. You can find the English version here.

Job search

I will graduate in May 2007, so I'm looking for internships and jobs right now. Some great sites that are helping me in my search are JournalismJobs.com and PrincetonReview.com.

Journalist's Toolbox

A journalist doing research should always check out the Journalist's Toolbox. It has many tools journalists need when approaching a story or trying to come up with story ideas.

Princeton Review

The Princeton Review Web site comes in handy. It gives information for high schoolers looking at colleges, college students, graduate school, law school, etc. It gives help in finding study abroad programs as well as internships. The internship search is extremely helpful. You can look at the day in the life of chosen profession and find the average salary and hours per week. Every link you click on will give you more and more information — it's fabulous.

Great journalism tools

This is a super-helpful site my instructor showed us. Christopher Callahan gives information on courts and the law, politics, the Freedom of Information Act and much more. It's a great guide for journalists. In fact, it's called A Journalist's Guide to the Internet.

Find a phone number

Finding phone numbers online can be difficult. The site I've had the most luck with is Switchboard. Sometimes you want to know if a number is from a cell phone or a land line. This site will help, and it also helps with international numbers.

Find a newspaper anywhere

This site is great to help you find a newspaper or magazine almost anywhere in the world. It's a great site for me because I plan to work for a newspaper when I graduate, but I eventually want to work for a magazine.

DE

The Daily Egyptian is the Southern Illinois University Carbondale student-run newspaper. I have worked there since August 2006 and plan to continue working there until I graduate. We've had some great changes in that we have a new Web site.

my dear friend kari and me

We are required to start a blog for my journalism class. This is my first post. My instructor's blog is here.